Where is the birthplace of the Queen Mother of the West?

Jingchuan has the earliest Taoist cultural heritage of Empress Dowager and the earliest historical remains of Empress Dowager Ancestral Temple in China.

The Queen Mother, also known as the Golden Mother, the Golden Mother of Yaochi and the Queen Mother of the West, is a legendary goddess. The strange god who was originally in charge of punishment and plague gradually became soft and gentle in the process of spreading and became an old and kind goddess. According to legend, the Queen Mother lives in Yaochi, Kunlun Mountain, and there are flat peaches in the garden, which can be eaten forever.

The culture of the Western Queen Mother is an important part of Taoist culture and has gone through a development process. With the evolution of history, the image and status of the Queen Mother of the West are changing. In the primitive tribal period, the legend of the Queen Mother of the West as a tribal leader developed into a myth because of ancestor worship, and the Queen Mother of the West also changed from a person to a god and became a god who managed the West. In myths and legends, she is portrayed as a cruel and fierce god, half man and half beast. In addition, there are cunning monsters with horns, leopard prints and barking sounds, and three blue birds with red feathers who like to eat fish. "Shan Hai Jing" says: "The Queen Mother of the West is like a human being, with a leopard's tail and tiger's teeth, but she is good at whistling, and she is full of Dai Sheng, which is the strength of the company." As a god, the gender of the Queen Mother of the West has not been determined at this time.

The words and deeds recorded in Mu Zhuan are like a gentle ruler. The Queen Mother of the West hosted a banquet for Zhou Muwang in Yaochi. She was in high spirits and wrote a poem as a thank you. One of them said, "I'm just an emperor and a daughter." It can be inferred that at the latest in the Warring States period, people thought that the Queen Mother of the West was a woman.

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Taoism rose and the Queen Mother of the West was accepted as a Taoist deity. It is said that she is the daughter of the original Tianzun and Taiyuan Jade Girl, named Jiuguang Yuannv, who was betrothed to a "godhead" who lives in Penglai Fairy Island in the East China Sea. -dong. In order to match the identity of "fairy goddess", her strange appearance, which is half man and half beast, has been shaped into a beautiful fairy with elegant manners, and her original image of tiger tooth and leopard tail is said to be the messenger of the western tiger god, the Queen Mother.

Since the Tang Dynasty, the Jade Emperor has been listed as the object of national worship, becoming the "Lord of all gods" and sitting in the top spot in the sky. In people's wishes, it seems more reasonable to graceful and restrained the beautiful goddess, the Queen Mother of the West, to become a formal queen. So she and the jade emperor paired up and called her the queen mother.